


a tiny apartment and the largest blizzard of the decade

by mistyheartrbs



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blizzards & Snowstorms, F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 19:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29176665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistyheartrbs/pseuds/mistyheartrbs
Summary: Ten years later, Rachel and Quinn find themselves trapped in an apartment against a howling snowstorm.
Relationships: Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray, Santana Lopez/Brittany S. Pierce
Comments: 7
Kudos: 96





	a tiny apartment and the largest blizzard of the decade

**Author's Note:**

> i have no idea how i managed to write this entire thing in a day and a half. but here it is?

She knew it was cliche, of course it was, but New York looked like a snowglobe on nights like this. Snowflakes fell in big puffs, melting into the roads and the trees and the streetlights (oh, how they _glowed_ in the nighttime!) and muffling everything. 

Rachel Berry didn’t particularly enjoy being muffled by anything, but she’d make an exception for the snow. It reminded her of those Ohio winters, when she’d wake up at five in the morning (possibly earlier) and her dads would warn her not to go outside without a coat or else she’d get the sniffles. Later, she’d appreciate it for the dramatic potential, the way that every single feeling seemed to be _amplified_ in the snow. 

The weatherman on TV said that it’d probably pick up soon, that there was a blizzard on the way. Best to stay inside, best to stock up on groceries, all of that. Rachel had enough instant ramen to last her at least a month (sacrifices had to be made, living so close to Broadway without the steadiest of jobs to support herself; ramen was an easy fix) and a backup generator besides, so she just kept watching the snow fall thicker and thicker until it seemed to block out her entire window, like someone had painted over it. 

Which is of course why it took her a few moments to realize that Quinn Fabray was walking in the middle of the road. 

***

Quinn liked the city, but she liked it significantly less when it was _trying to kill her,_ as seemed to be the situation here. The cold _bit_ at her, stinging her ears and turning her fingers red. Oh, she didn’t regret coming here - wouldn’t miss it for the _world_ \- but she regretted taking the bus, even more so when the bus stopped several miles away from her intended destination. 

This was divine punishment. It had to be. Or at least karma, biting her in the ass for those crude little pictures she drew in the bathrooms in her sophomore year of high school, and somehow nothing she’d done in the _decade_ since then did anything to change how _shit_ her luck was at the moment. 

_“Quinn?”_ And now she was hearing things. Of course. The hotel was (according to her phone’s less-than-reliable maps app) still four miles away, and she’d gotten so cold that she was starting to hallucinate. That was a thing, wasn’t it? In deserts, people were known to picture oases, water where there wasn’t anything but sand. It made perfect sense that in the biting cold her subconscious brain would decide to conjure up Rachel Berry poking her head out of an apartment window. 

So she continued walking. Bygones were bygones and so on and so forth. She wasn’t going to bother with old ghosts. Their paths had forked and there was no going back and she had a life besides, a life that didn’t involve Rachel Berry. She was here for Santana and Brittany and their Cheerios reunion-slash-girls-trip and nothing else at all. 

Though it would’ve been so much easier just to meet up for coffee back home. They hung out every few weeks anyway. What was the point of going all the way to New York for a single weekend? But Brittany’d said something about sweet memories and a dream-message from her cat and Santana hadn’t been able to say no to that and so here they were, or at least here _she_ was, because she didn’t really want to spend an entire train ride third-wheeling the sweetest and most infuriatingly _good_ couple in the world when she’d have an entire weekend to do that. 

_“Quinn, I know it’s you.”_ And there it was again. At least the part of her brain that stored the memories of what her friends sounded like hadn’t shut down to preserve heat. It sure as anything _sounded_ like Rachel. _“The doctors said I have the eyesight of a falcon!”_

Finally, mostly because she was in the middle of a busy street in a busy city in the middle of a blizzard and she’d memorized enough routines in her time to make any motion look like a coordinated accident, Quinn turned around.

And her mouth went dry.

And she thought, in the one part of her head that wasn’t utterly dumbstruck, _of all the New York apartments in the world._

***

Rachel stood far enough away that she could treat Quinn like an apparition, like something she could blink away if she tried hard enough. Which was ridiculous, she knew, because she’d been the one to invite her inside, hadn’t she? Letting her dump her things in the front hall and greeting her with one of those weird straight-girl hugs that were mostly arms and positioned both of them far enough away from each other that they didn’t have to feel _too_ awkward about this.

“What brings you to New York?” Rachel asked, fumbling around in her little cabinet for two teacups that matched as the kettle screamed behind her. “Of course it would’ve been nice if you’d called first, I’m in between roommates and without someone holding me accountable I think I’m a little bit of a mess, but it’s always nice to have a visitor. Anyway. I thought you’d settled down in Lima?”

“Girls’ weekend,” Quinn drawled, and Rachel didn’t miss the way she’d taken one of the blankets off the couch and wrapped it around her shoulders like a little shawl. “Or a planned one, anyway. The bus guy dropped me off at the wrong street and now it looks like nobody’s going anywhere, so I guess Britt and Santana’ll have the weekend to themselves.” 

“Sugar?” Rachel lifted a teacup for emphasis. Quinn nodded, and Rachel dropped a sugarcube in the cup, watched it dissolve. 

“Look at us.” Quinn glanced out the window again. She was right - they’d both be holed up here for a while yet. Just what she needed, the week before an audition, her old frenemy (a phrase which didn’t come close to summing up everything Quinn was to her, but it was a portmanteau of at least two of those things and “possible almost lover” didn’t have exactly the same catty ring to it) showing up in front of her house. “Almost like we’re adults, drinking tea and talking about the weather.”

“Almost,” Rachel said, and carried the teacups over on a platter. One couch in her apartment and hardly any guests besides, it was a lonely existence but not an unprecedented one. It did make things harder, though, when she was doing something like this. _This_ being sitting across from her frenemy, or possible almost lover, or whatever one might chance to call Quinn Fabray wrapped in a hand-knit blanket from the flea market. There wasn’t much space between them at all. 

“Nice place you’ve got.” Quinn looked around. It was, if nothing else, impeccably well-lit, or at least Rachel liked to think it was. She kept at least seven lamps on at all times. The electricity bill probably had something to do with that, and consequently probably had something to do with her aforementioned backup stash of ramen. Working extra hours at an automat that appeared to have been in service for longer than anyone she knew had been _alive_ could only do so much. But she appreciated the warmth of it, the coziness. If you couldn’t create that with another person, lamps didn’t make for the worst substitute. 

“Thank you.” They lapsed, then, into the sort of uncomfortable silence that nightmares are built from. Rachel sipped her tea. She didn’t tell Quinn - would never tell Quinn - that the main reason why she’d made tea for the both of them was because she was saving the last of the coffee for the morning before the audition, so that she could have every scrap of energy possibly laying dormant in her body. 

“I should call Santana.” Quinn started to reach into her bag, then took her hand back. “Then again, she’s probably already settled in at the hotel. She might be asleep. Or, you know.” Quinn licked her lips. Rachel tried very hard not to notice this. She didn’t do a very good job of it - not the sort of acting that would net her the accolades she saw when she dreamt pleasant dreams of stardom, to be sure. Likely not even the sort of acting that would get her a nod in a local production. 

“You can stay here tonight,” she blurted out, all in a single breath. If she’d breathed between a word - any word - she’d have lost her nerve, she was certain of it. Quinn opened her mouth, said nothing, seemed to want to make some kind of protest. Rachel stood up, gestured to the window. “Nobody’s going anywhere in this weather. And I wouldn’t be a very hospitable person if I left you out to freeze in the cold, and the guilt would mess with my head anyway, which would affect my performance at the audition. So really you’d be doing me a favor, staying here.”

“Always glad to help,” Quinn retorted, dry. Oh, strange nostalgia. Rachel’s high school self never would have been able to comprehend a world where she actually felt _good_ seeing Quinn Fabray roll her eyes. 

“The couch is plenty spacious, I have more blankets in the bedroom if you need them. The snow should be clear by tomorrow.” A lie and she knew it, but what else was she supposed to say? _Hey, Quinn. Quinnie. Can I call you that? I know we haven’t had an actual conversation in five years but you_ might _be stuck with me for the next two to four days!_ Not a chance. She’d just have to hope for the best, _the best_ being, of course, an efficient snowplow system and enough sun to guiltlessly send Quinn on her way so that she could focus on the audition and release herself from this _cycle._

“Thanks.” Quinn wrapped herself tighter in the blanket, as if she was about to fall asleep right there. The snow had picked up to enough of a degree that the wind actually _whistled_ outside, and if Rachel weren’t in enough of a mood from _all of this_ she’d have tried to identify what song it sounded like. 

(She still did. It sounded like “Take The Long Way Home”, which seemed fitting enough for tonight)

“I should probably try and get a good night’s sleep, though, so…” Rachel started to inch her way towards the bedroom. Quinn relaxed, visibly, sinking into the couch until Rachel started to wonder if it would swallow her whole. 

***

Quinn didn’t call Santana and Brittany until she was reasonably certain Rachel had fallen asleep - _reasonably,_ because she wouldn’t be surprised if Rachel never slept. She was probably running lines right then, or making some plan to revolutionize something or other. 

And when she did, she started to wish she hadn’t. 

“You’re in the middle of something,” she said, flatly, before she could hear Santana lie between breathy laughter or hear Brittany tell her, sparing nothing, _exactly_ what she’d interrupted. 

_“Where_ are _you?”_ Santana asked, voice staticky through the phone. 

_“We were starting to think you’d been eaten,”_ Brittany added. 

“I got on the wrong bus. I’m staying with a…friend. The snow’s supposed to clear up by tomorrow.” Quinn had, of course, seen through Rachel’s incredibly bold-faced and admittedly well-acted lie, but she also wanted to believe it if everyone was being honest with themselves tonight. 

_“Well, take your time. It’s not like we planned this trip for months or anything.”_

“I’ll let you know first thing in the morning.” Quinn hung up - that was how they did things, the three of them, no time for pleasantries or hellos or goodbyes, simply a sort of comforting knowledge that they’d pick up the conversation right where it left off. 

She looked up at the ceiling, tried to make some sort of pattern out of the haphazard cracks up there. There wasn’t anything, of course. Nothing ever had any order to it anymore. 

As is true for most people, Quinn didn’t remember when she fell asleep, and she didn’t remember dreaming - all she knew was that at some point she woke up to the sun screaming through the window and herself curled up on Rachel Berry’s couch.

***

It was, put in gentle terms, worse than Rachel feared. Snow piled up on every street, burying everything in sight, looking like nothing so much as a cartoon where the entire Antarctic’s worth of stuff had been unceremoniously dumped outside her apartment overnight. 

She was an early riser. Always had been and always would be. Some people asked her where she got the energy to continue when she had a maximum of five hours of sleep per night (if she was lucky) and she would just give them a clever little wink. So it was no surprise at all that she woke up before her unexpected roommate, that she muttered lines from the script (it wasn’t the _worst_ role she’d made plans to audition for, if a little lacking in terms of clear character motivation) as she made breakfast and tiptoed around Quinn. There wouldn’t be any work at the automat today, that was for sure. 

So she’d have an entire day alone with Quinn Fabray. Who she hadn’t spoken to in several years. That was good, and normal, and not the most wildly uncomfortable thing she could’ve possibly imagined happening to her. 

Quinn stirred, slowly at first, wrapped so tightly in that blanket that it looked like it’d become a part of her. Rachel turned around. She wasn’t going to be one of those people who _watched someone sleep,_ no, she was better than that. The apartment was just very small and it was hard to miss the couch in the dead center of it unless you made an active effort to do so. Which she wasn’t doing. 

Quinn made herself smaller in her sleep, curled up with her knees pulled to her chest, hair starting to fall over into her mouth. Rachel tightened her jaw. She should turn away. Any moment now, Quinn would wake up to her former(?) frenemy _watching her sleep_ like a _freak_ and would no doubt have some rude little comment about that. 

So she did turn away, about one and a half seconds too late.

“Enjoying the view?” Quinn’s voice was huskier, addled with sleep as it was, and Rachel gulped. Almost _raspy,_ it was.

“Good morning, Quinn,” she said, making a very active effort to keep her voice clipped. 

“So I’m probably not going anywhere.” Quinn gestured in the direction of the window, where the snow had started up again. More flakes whirled in the wind, more of them stuck to the glass and melted a few seconds later. The landlord had turned up the heating again. No doubt they’d tack _that_ onto the utilities bill at the end of the month, too. There really wasn’t any way to win. Maybe it was revenge for the lamps. “I haven’t kept up with anyone from McKinley other than Santana and Brittany. Are you on Broadway yet?”

“It’s one of the most competitive markets in the world,” Rachel said, her tone measured, her response rehearsed. Any sane person would’ve gone home by now, long as she’d been here. But she wasn’t “any sane person,” so. There. “But I have an audition tomorrow.” Quinn glanced out the window again.

“You probably don’t.”

“No, I probably don’t. But they’ll call and reschedule and I’ll be able to try out as soon as this snow clears up.”

“God, you’re relentless.” Quinn sat up, wriggled out of her blanket burrito. “I’m doing great, by the way.”

“Oh.” Rachel faltered, just for a moment, then recomposed herself. “I’m glad to hear it.” 

“Home’s the same as it was.” 

_Home._ What a strange word, or concept, or what have you. Rachel didn’t say anything else.

***

Someone a little bit more aggressive might’ve said something like _what happened to us?_ Quinn herself, in high school, might’ve said that. But time had mellowed them both out and here she was, facing Rachel Berry and still feeling that weird chest-squeezing feeling she’d long since stopped trying to repress and wondering if this was _fate_ or something. So she just kind of sat there, waiting, watching, as someone she almost loved (could’ve loved) kept flicking her gaze back and forth from her bunched-together script to the window and back to the script again.

She wasn’t looking at Quinn. And that was fine. Of course it was. 

***

Nobody defines themselves as _stir-crazy._ Nobody thinks, actively, that they’d get restless and uncomfortable trapped in a tiny little apartment in the middle of a raging snowstorm, because it’s not a situation that most people think about on the daily. 

So Rachel didn’t think it was weird that she couldn’t stop moving, that she had taken several little laps around the space before noon as Quinn watched the fuzzy TV and drifted in and out of consciousness on the couch. But apparently it was, because-

“Are you trying out for the role of a hummingbird?” Quinn finally asked, plain and exhausted. She’d have been able to come up with something better given a little more time, Rachel was sure - it was pretty tame as far as mean jokes went - but then again maybe they were both past that. Rachel paused mid-line. It was the first thing Quinn had said in hours.

“Hm?”

“Because they die if they stop moving. So, you…” Quinn trailed off. “What _is_ the thing you’re trying out for, anyway? Since I’ll apparently be stuck with it for the next week.”

“Oh. It’s this musical about an heiress who gets sent back in time to the Prohibition era, and she falls in love with a smuggler. The writing’s a little hokey, but the music is solid and I’d get a lot of solos.”

“Sounds right up your alley.” Quinn adjusted herself, sat up. If nothing else she no longer looked like she’d die of hypothermia at any given moment. So at least that wouldn’t be on Rachel’s conscience, too, in addition to everything else. 

“I know you want to laugh, you know. Here’s Rachel Berry, exactly where everyone thought she’d end up. But I have a good feeling about this one.”

“Great.” Quinn flipped to another channel on the TV, some news anchor talking about _the worst blizzard in a decade_ or something equally exaggerated. She licked her lips again. Rachel decided to put her acting skills to use and very much pretended not to notice.

***

Quinn was in the middle of responding to a set of texts from Santana and Brittany - they’d found some laughably bad on-demand movie in their hotel and sent her blurry photographs of it every few minutes - when Rachel plonked down a stack of board games in front of her.

“Okay,” she said, just barely bent down to eye level. “We can’t cohabitate without driving the other person batshit, I’m aware of that. But we _also_ can’t act like the other person doesn’t exist. They charge rent by the square foot here, so I know exactly how small this apartment is. So we are going to _make the best of a bad thing_ and play these, unless you have a better idea.”

“You’re not giving me a choice, are you?” Quinn drawled, flipping open the first game in the stack anyway, ignoring the way that brief contact with Rachel’s hand sent a jolt of electricity through her. It was the blanket, she was sure of it. They both had thick sweaters, it must’ve been static. 

(Overcoming compulsory heterosexuality was one thing. Overcoming misplaced high school yearning was another.)

“Not really, no.” Rachel didn’t move her hand, her gaze darting in Quinn’s direction for just a moment, just long enough that they both could’ve easily imagined it. “Some of the pieces are missing from that one.”

“I’m better at it, though.” 

“You’re not.”

“I guess we’ll just have to see about that.” Quinn layered on the sweetness, the syrupy tone that’d made the boys swoon a million years ago, and it felt like wearing a costume. Fun, for sure, but not really herself. 

_God,_ when had she become such a downer? She’d kick Rachel’s ass in chess and then go back to laughing at Santana’s dry commentary on the total lack of chemistry between the two boring straight people in that movie playing in a nice cozy hotel room on the other side of town. 

***

Some things that Rachel had never considered, having only played chess with her dads and Mr. Schue that one time:

-the board was not very big  
-replacing the missing knight with a thimble was cute in theory but mostly just made it so both of them kept forgetting whose piece it was and also _what_ piece it was  
-Quinn Fabray grinned whenever she got to knock over a piece, and she looked _radiant_ whenever she did it.

Running through this list (which was updated every few minutes) in her head helped keep her grounded, helped keep her from knocking over the whole thing. She’d brushed her hand against Quinn’s at least three times over the course of the game, and as it turned out neither of them were very good at chess, but they _were_ both very competitive, so there was that to contend with.

“You’ve got three pieces left,” Rachel said, scanning the board and scanning the board and trying and trying to find a way out of the trap Quinn had somehow managed to snare her king in. Bluffing could do the job, sometimes. Not often, but maybe here… 

“And I’m winning. Clearly.” Quinn slid her rook back across the board, setting up something that probably had a name, letting it sit back on her side. Rachel reached over and pushed her last remaining pawn over to the other end and very smugly picked her queen back up from Quinn’s side. Quinn slid the rook over and knocked over the barely-crowned queen. Rachel allowed herself a tiny smile and took out the rook, and it continued like that until both of them just had their kings, circling each other, not quite able to do anything to the other.

“Stalemate,” Rachel said, and was just a little bit relieved. Not that she hadn’t won - that part frustrated her - but that the game had gone on long enough that she could end it. The sun was going down earlier and earlier these days. She could call for a rematch and it’d likely be time for dinner by the time they finished it, and then there wouldn’t be any need for conversation or anything of that sort. 

Quinn’s phone jingled. Rachel started to reorganize the chessboard. 

“That’s a new ringtone,” she said, as if she’d ever known what Quinn’s ringtone was. As if they’d been the kinds of friends who’d stayed in touch for this long. Quinn glanced at the phone, as if she’d forgotten it was there.

“Oh. I set it up so it only plays that for those two.” 

“I have that for everyone I meet. I’ve developed a playlist for potential ringtones, based on what they give off and any kind of memory I have associated with them.”

“So what’s mine?” Quinn rocked her thimble-knight back and forth with her pointer finger. Rachel felt something akin to warm shame spreading through her - or maybe that was just her body preparing for when the landlord inevitably turned off her heating. 

“I don’t…I got this fairly recently. I haven’t imported all of my old contacts into it yet.” Well, those guys at the audition wouldn't be able to turn her down if she could act onstage with that amount of bravado. The truth: she didn’t think the two of them would ever talk again. Some things were best left unsaid and all of that. 

“Right.” Quinn exhaled, long and steady. “So, you’ve set us up for a rematch. Care to go first?” Rachel turned the board around.

“I wouldn’t be following the rules if I didn’t.”

“You’re ruthless.” Something in Quinn’s eyes sparked, something Rachel had honestly never thought she’d see again. She did her best to ignore it and pushed a pawn forward.

***

Night fell before Quinn and Rachel found it fitting to end their multitude of games - a long-running tournament in which part of the way along they’d set up a scoreboard on a whiteboard, their names next to each other and divided by a long and perfectly straight line. Rachel had used a ruler. Quinn had laughed at her for it. 

The score, as it stood, was ten for both of them. This Jenga tower seemed tense enough that it’d be a fitting ending. Rachel stuck her tongue out as she slowly, carefully, tenderly dislodged a block from the middle of the tower. Quinn watched her closely, watched how she held her breath and released it as soon as she’d gotten the block out. It had to be all those times she’d belted out some song or another, increased lung capacity or _something._

“It’s your turn,” Rachel said, nodding towards the structure. It looked more like a modern art installation than anything at the moment, all of the bits missing and scattered on the coffee table. Quinn stood up and hoped that the very small amount of sweat starting to form on her hands wouldn’t stop her from doing this - precision had always been the name of the game; most everything she’d ever done was planned and careful and sharp. To lose something as crucially focus-focused as _Jenga_ to _Rachel Berry_ of all people would be an embarrassment. She couldn’t pinpoint the moment when she actually got the thing out of the tower any more than one could pinpoint when they fell asleep - one second she was reaching for it, the next it was in her hand and the structure wobbled so precariously Quinn forgot to breathe.

“Good one,” Rachel said, her hands burrowed into the sleeves of her sweater and her brow furrowed in focus. Quinn acted like she didn’t notice how unfortunately and impossibly _cute_ that was. She could act with the best of them, when required, just because she didn’t _flaunt_ it like Rachel had-

And then her mind went very blank because the structure was no more, just a pile of little wooden blocks on a coffee table as Rachel held one in her hand with her lips pressed together in frustration. Quinn couldn’t help but mark down her victory with just a little bit of a flourish. 

“I won,” she said, like it wasn’t obvious. Rachel rolled her eyes and started to gather the blocks up again. “Wait.”

“Are you planning to gloat again? It’s a game more or less determined by chance and physics. You could pick something else to gloat about if that’s what you want to do.”

“No.” Quinn swept up a few blocks into her hands, starting to put them back in the box. “Let me.” Rachel sat back, clearly befuddled, and Quinn couldn’t help but crack a smile at her expression. 

Even though their hands brushed again. Even though the ferocity of the snow outside made it so that the apartment felt even smaller, even more intimate. 

Even though Quinn was cursing herself for ever taking the bus in the first place.

***

After a predictably microwaved dinner, Rachel and Quinn found themselves in front of the television, again, flipping through the channels as nothing but war and the occasional commercial for vitamin supplements flicked by. 

“Don’t you have any DVDs?” Quinn finally asked, again wrapped in the same blanket. Her birthday was coming up, Rachel thought idly. Or maybe it’d already passed. She always forgot the specifics. 

“I have two copies of _Rent._ Other than that, no, not really.”

“From your failed _GayLesbAll?”_

“And from Kurt. He called it a housewarming gift.” Rachel laughed softly at that. The TV glowed on Quinn’s face, and it wasn’t fair, not really. How was she expected to continue like this? “And besides I don’t have a player, so it’s a moot point. Mostly I just watch things online if I have to.”

“So efficient.” Quinn leaned back a little bit. 

“It’s difficult to find work here. You have to save everything you can, even with connections like the ones I have. Everyone else is working nearly as hard as you are, so any kind of leg up you can have in terms of proximity to the theater district or even in the kind of television you have really does help.” 

“A whole city full of Rachel Berrys.” Quinn glanced at her, expression serene and haunting in that way only she could pull off. “I can’t imagine what that’s like.”

“You joke, but that’s how it is.” Rachel shut off the television, then, so that the only light in the room came from the lamps. “It’s weird. Big fish, small pond, all of that. I think I started to assume it’d get easier once I graduated college, but it’s still as challenging as anything.” 

“It’s a different world, that’s for sure.” Quinn didn’t move. Every vertebrate, every single part of her, completely still, all while she kept looking at her. “For both of us.”

“For both of us,” Rachel echoed, and she felt like she ought to toast to something, but she didn’t particularly want to get up from the couch, so she didn’t. 

She slept restlessly that night, dreaming of a million people with her face.

***

If not for the snow keeping everything coming in and out of New York City grounded indefinitely, this would be the last day of the girls’ weekend as planned by the Lopez-Pierces. As it was, Quinn knew that Santana and Brittany had extended their stay in the nice cozy hotel for another two nights, and she was still stuck with Rachel. 

Rachel, who was already awake when Quinn felt the very beginnings of consciousness starting to tear her delicately from sleep, who was already dressed and walking around singing about how her cell phone didn’t work a hundred years in the past, and who would she call if she could call anyone in the world, and there might’ve been a pun about bars and bars in there. 

It was nice, not that Quinn would ever admit it. She had to have some kind of advantage here. But sleep addled her brain and made her impulsive and so that was the excuse she was already going with when she said _“you sound nice.”_

“Oh.” Rachel stopped. “I thought you were still asleep.”

“You woke me up.” Quinn blinked until the world was somewhat reasonably in focus, smiled wryly.

“I’m not used to having company here.”

“Really? I’d have thought you’d be…hosting little parties or something. Impressing the fine folks of the theater world.” 

“No, it’s just me.” Rachel pulled the windowshades up. Quinn hadn’t known Rachel _had_ windowshades. “The snow’s calmed down a little bit. We could probably go outside, if you wanted. Nobody’s plowed the street yet and it doesn’t look like any cars are running but if you just wanted to get some fresh air we could step out for a little while. I’m going to anyway, it’s not good for you to stay indoors for so long unless there’s a reason for it.” As she talked, like a whirlwind, she plucked a coat from somewhere, bundled herself up. “But if you want to join me I wouldn’t mind that.” 

“I guess it beats sitting here.” Quinn stretched, her joints popping as she did so. “Give me a minute. I didn’t check the weather before coming.” An admission of weakness. Another thing she never would have done, in her youth - saying she’d messed up in _any_ capacity. “But it should be fine.” She got up, then, started to dig around in her suitcase for her laughably flimsy coat and put it on without much fanfare. 

“You’ll freeze in that,” Rachel said, automatically. Quinn looked up. “And then what would I have done all of this for? Come here.” Quinn did, and Rachel took off her scarf, and Quinn’s heart jumped up in her chest and _damn it all_ she was losing her mind if _this_ was doing something to her. Rachel wrapped it around Quinn's neck, keeping her hands on her shoulders just a second longer than she needed to, and Quinn didn’t move. Couldn’t, more like. She was glad nobody else was here; any one of her friends would have had a field day with Quinn Fabray _paralyzed by love_ or what have you. 

Santana and Brittany, especially. They’d have just _known,_ and probably given each other one of those telepathic wife looks they’d perfected.

“Let’s go, then,” Quinn said, in lieu of anything else, and so they went.

***

Rachel felt the impact of the cold winds like a wrecking ball to the face, wincing as snow blew into her eyes. The downpour had ceased, for now - though it’d start again soon, according to the ever-persistent weather forecast - but the wind hadn’t and so flurries were tossed about by the whims of Mother Nature, mostly in Rachel’s face. 

“I feel like I haven’t been outside in a year,” Quinn said, taking it all in. It was impossible to tell where the sidewalk ended and the road began, all of it blanketed in such a thick layer of snow, and nobody else was outside. Nobody else wanted to battle the elements. 

In the dramatic little part of Rachel’s brain that was very good at coming up with long-winded monologues, she thought that it made her and Quinn some of the most interesting people in the world, that they were - despite everything else - united in _this,_ standing together with snow up to their knees. Well. To Rachel’s knees, anyway - more to the lower part of Quinn’s legs. 

“It’s stunning.” Rachel let herself look at Quinn as she said it, really truly looked at her for possibly the first time in their day-and-a-half-long cohabitation. She felt every part of herself, all the thrumming in her fingers and legs and chest, all of it was tuned to the key of _her,_ Quinn Fabray, wading around in the snow like a little kid, packing it around in her bare hands like a madwoman. “Are you making a snowman? I don’t think that’s big enough for-”

Quinn answered by hitting Rachel directly in the chest with a snowball. She staggered back, clutching herself as if mortally wounded. 

“You know, cheap tricks only work once.” Rachel packed together a snowball of her own, flung it at Quinn with most of her strength. Quinn squealed as it hit her arm, and then, if anyone else had been looking out their windows that morning, they’d have seen two grown women engaged in a snowball fight of the grandest and most epic proportions, and if that person had waited a little longer, they’d have seen those same two women flopped over on their backs, staring up at the gray sky and laughing together, breathing with their mouths open and joyful. 

***

Quinn rummaged through her suitcase for a change of clothes as soon as the pair of them returned to the apartment, and she imagined that Rachel did the same thing in her bedroom.

The euphoria didn’t wear off when she left the street, didn’t wear off when she returned to her senses and realized she’d just acted like a little kid around the girl she could’ve - _had_ \- loved and that they had just kept _going_ after the initial stupid snowball. 

What was she supposed to do with that? The weekend plans were so simple, so easy: spend a few nights third-wheeling her two best friends, see the sights, and then return home. It would’ve been _fun._ It wouldn’t have made her feel like _this_ in any case, more alert than she’d been in a while, like every single thing in the apartment was suddenly in high definition, like _she_ was in high definition. 

“We might be lucky,” Rachel said, walking out of the bedroom in a flannel shirt that looked like the softest thing Quinn had ever seen. “The forecast says that there’s a fifty-fifty chance of the blizzard moving down to Pennsylvania.” 

“Oh.” Quinn felt something in her throat, then, some kind of thick and bitter bile. She ignored it as best she could, the way she’d ignored so many things. 

“But then again they’ve changed their opinions so many times in the past two days. I think the weather’s pressing on them too.” 

“Right.” Quinn swallowed the bile and stood up. “I’ll call Santana and Britt, then. They’ll be happy to know we can head home soon.”

“Say hi to them, okay?” Rachel rested a hand on the wall, and something creaked. Quinn wanted to hold it, suddenly, more than she’d ever wanted anything else in her life, and still she said nothing, because soon enough she’d be out of here anyway. Rachel would laugh at how she ended up hosting her old high school frenemy (what a boring word, that, for what they’d been to each other) in her apartment for a few days. Maybe she’d use it as interview fodder if it came down to that. 

These were all things she didn’t dare consider aloud. Rachel didn’t seem to notice either way. 

***

 _“Yeah, she said the plows might come through soon.”_ Quinn sat on the couch like she’d lived there her whole life. Rachel, standing in the doorway between the bedroom and the living room, kept looking between her and the script - more a nervous habit than anything; she knew the whole thing by heart at this point. She could probably recite it backwards. _“I know, I know. I didn’t even know she still_ lived _here.”_

The muffled sound of Santana’s voice came through the phone, and Rachel found herself inching closer to listen. 

“I kind of thought she’d move back after a while. But she’s still trying.” Quinn tugged at a strand of her hair, lost in some thought Rachel couldn’t parse. “If you want the truth, it’s kind of admirable. Going and going and going like that.” 

Something from Brittany. Rachel couldn’t parse out the words, but she knew the sounds of both their voices, the way they sounded so _right_ together. 

“So I might see you in a few hours.” 

Both of them said something in high, laughing tones, and then hung up. Quinn turned to face Rachel, as if she hadn’t known she was there before, and for some reason _that_ was what did it, what made her skin prickle like something was begging, unyielding, to escape. 

“Oh. Hey.”

“There’s something that you should know about me, which is something I’d apparently wrongly assumed you knew already after several years worth of animosity turned to friendship turned to animosity again.” Rachel made no move to sit down, to level with Quinn in the literal sense. She was so rarely taller than anyone, and she relished this moment. “I don’t quit. I don’t leave things unfinished if I can help it. So I’m not sure why you thought that I’d just _go home_ when _this_ is my home now.”

“This specific apartment. Really.” Quinn looked up at her, defiant. They might as well have been back in the choir room. Rachel felt the room grow colder, more fraught. “Living all alone, waiting on a call that won’t come. _That’s_ home to you?”

“I live here, and I plan to remain here for the indefinite future, so _yes,_ that makes it home. I’m a practical woman, even if I’m not going to stop going for what I want. I’m not going to pack up and run away when things get hard.” 

“Is that what you think _I_ did?” Quinn stared at her, then, and Rachel absurdly wanted very badly to kiss her right then. The wind started howling again. 

“I don’t know _what_ you’ve been doing, Quinn,” Rachel said honestly, and she hated that it was true. 

“But it’s like you said, isn’t it? I’ll be out of your way soon enough, and you can go back to living here with a bunch of half-broken _board games_ for company.” 

If Rachel didn’t know better, she’d have said that Quinn had punctuated the end of that sentence with a sudden and unfortunate power outage. 

(It’s how she would’ve liked to end an argument, at least)

“Well,” Quinn said, airy and completely invisible in the dark. “Shit.” 

***

After several minutes of Rachel fumbling around in the relative darkness of the apartment for a lantern, the two of them ended up on the couch together, lit by a phone light and several of the aforementioned lanterns. Quinn’s phone was spared from the lighting effort because, according to Rachel, at least one of them needed to have something to call people with “in case of the worst.”

Quinn wasn’t in the mood to think about what “the worst” was in this context. Her, getting very cold in this drafty apartment, and Rachel Berry, also very cold, _living_ in this apartment. 

“It’s starting again,” Rachel said, in a low and ominous tone that Quinn had to snort at, as she looked out the window. This whole thing was ridiculous. Rachel’s theatrics weren’t helping. 

“So I’m stuck here for another night, is what you’re saying.” This blizzard would go down in the record books. Children would ask her how it went, if she’d seen the days the snow fell and fell and didn’t stop falling from the sky, and Quinn would have to tell them she spent it with this girl she knew in high school. 

“Yes.” Rachel’s tone was sharp, but her eyes held sympathy, too much sympathy for someone like her. Quinn wanted her to stop - it would be so much easier if they could just fight like they used to and leave their friendship at its uncomplicated worst. 

But nothing was on her side lately. She knew it and Rachel knew it and they were both trapped, apparently, for at least another night, together, in the cold. 

“I should go over the script again. They’ll probably push back the audition and some of the other girls might get lazy, so I can seize the chance.” Rachel looked ethereal in the lamplight. Quinn wouldn’t tell her, _couldn’t_ tell her, but she thought it anyway, and that was probably what led her to saying something else she never could have imagined saying a decade ago.

“I could run lines with you.” 

***

“So are you the heiress or the smuggler?” Rachel and Quinn sat opposite each other at the kitchen island, finally graduated from the couch, mostly because the couch was closer to the window and they were both very cold. Rachel wore her coat, and Quinn kept the blanket around herself, and what a strange and freezing pair they made.

“The heiress.” Rachel watched Quinn flip through the script. “I think they’re hoping to cast someone famous for the smuggler. An understudy from _Mean Girls_ or something like that. But I’m amenable to anything. If I impress them enough, for all I know they might adjust it to a one-woman show.”

“Oh.” Quinn paused, then looked through the rest of the sample. “This is the thing you’ve been looking at all weekend? It’s three pages long.”

“And I know it like the back of my hand,” Rachel retorted. “Not to mention I needed the distraction.”

“From me.” Quinn kneaded the counter with her hands, clenching and unclenching her fingers, a fluid motion. It was mesmerizing. 

“It’s been a long time since I’ve lived with someone, and we can’t go anywhere. Tell me that you’re not itching to get away from me, too.” 

“Fine.” Quinn cocked her head to the side, her smile a V shape, and she started to read.

***

Who knew, really, what it was about power outages that made you pull people closer to you? The stiff and uncomfortable reading at the table gave way to standing in the middle of the apartment, which gave way to a tightly choreographed number on Rachel’s part, which gave way to a _duet_ of all things. 

“You know, they probably have something like this already set out,” Quinn said, in the middle of the dance anyway, during what was supposed to be the banter-filled interlude. “Or they just…won’t make you dance?” 

“It’s important to place yourself in the mindset for greatness.” Step, turn, and Rachel looked back at her. “And it’s not traditional in any case for them to send demos of the sheet music, so I’m thinking this might be on the avant-garde side of things. You never know what they might ask for.” Quinn stepped a little closer than the ridiculously elaborate choreography required. She could practically hear Coach Sylvester snapping _sloppy!_ in the distance. But Rachel didn’t say anything, which wasn’t like her. More clever and witty lyrics about love in the most unlikely places. Quinn hoped there wouldn’t be too much time between now and the cast recording for this musical; else she’d have the song stuck in her head for a while. 

They were very close at the end of it, though neither woman would acknowledge it. 

“That’s one way to keep warm,” Quinn finally said, her hands still holding Rachel’s inner elbows. 

“Who needs heating?” Rachel looked at her, then, and this was the sort of thing romance was _made_ of, girls staring into each other’s eyes in a vast and magnificent city as snow swirled outside. 

“If I sleep in your bed tonight,” Quinn said, choosing her words carefully, “then it would just be because of the cold. Because the couch is close to the window.” Her mouth had gone dry. She didn’t dare try to roll her tongue around to wet it, didn’t dare move a muscle.

“Of course.” Rachel didn’t move her arms. Quinn wasn’t holding her that tightly at all. “Because it wouldn’t look very good, would it, if I let you freeze on my couch while I had a nice warm bed a few dozen feet away?” 

“It wouldn’t,” Quinn murmured, certain that her eyes were dilated like a cat’s, and she knew she’d be able to remember every second of this, every single movement as she put her finger under Rachel’s chin and leaned down, slightly, and then-

Then the universe ended and reformed itself. 

***

Rachel felt everything at the very same time that night. 

***

Quinn woke up first, for once. Rachel slept soundly next to her, face smushed against the pillow, and it was the most delicate sight Quinn had ever seen. She wanted to kiss her again. She wanted to fall back asleep next to her and wake up a decade in the past, where they could’ve skipped the bullshit and gotten to this so much earlier. 

She also knew, practically, that she’d need to get up soon. A snowplow hummed, far away, and it wouldn’t be too long now. Maybe she’d get a day or so with Santana and Brittany after all. 

But then that would mean leaving this place, leaving _Rachel,_ and since _when_ had that become something she didn’t want? 

It looked like the power was back on - last night she hadn’t exactly paid attention to the decor, but looking around now she saw the six lamps all turned on in various corners. That took her gaze around the room to the dresser, decorated with awards and group photos and other little scraps of things that Quinn figured were probably important. 

“G’morning,” Rachel said, scooting closer, and Quinn stopped. “I haven’t slept like that in _forever._ If I’d known that sleeping with-”

“Don’t you _dare_ finish that sentence with a joke.” Quinn clenched the sheets in her hands. Polka-dotted. Of _course_ they were polka-dotted. 

“I wasn’t planning to.” 

“Oh.” Quinn kept looking at the dresser, for fear of falling apart if she actually looked at Rachel again. “So…what now?”

“I should call the theater, in case they’re expecting me to take the initiative and reschedule for myself. It’s best to make sure they remember you, and if that involves bothering them until they stop withholding information, so be it.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Quinn paused. “I heard a snowplow earlier.”

“Oh.” Another pause. Neither of them were very good at this; that was becoming abundantly clear. Was it because of their former tendency to burst into dance and song at the smallest given opportunity? Did either of them even know _how_ to handle quiet moments like this? 

“You should visit Lima soon,” Quinn said. “I’m sure everyone misses you.”

“But you don’t?” Rachel didn’t say it judgmentally. It would’ve been so much easier if she had. 

“It’s not about me, is it?” Quinn laughed at herself. Self-deprecation was out, she knew, and that sort of thing didn’t do anyone any good, but she couldn’t help it. And neither could Rachel, apparently. What a pair they made. “I hope you get that part.”

“I will,” Rachel said, without a hint of doubt or irony to it. She was so _direct,_ when she wanted to be. Cunning and ruthless and still soft enough to dance with someone she’d hated and then - maybe - loved. 

“I know.” Quinn rested her head back on the pillow. Was this what Rachel saw every night, this cracked ceiling? Was this the first time someone else had seen it with her? 

They didn’t say anything else for the rest of the morning. Quinn, because she was afraid to, and Rachel…well, she didn’t know why Rachel didn’t say anything. 

It had started to become so abundantly clear that she’d never know.

***

“It’s ridiculously convenient,” Rachel said, plodding down the street as Quinn kept pace with her. She didn’t look behind her - no point in that - but she knew that if she did, there’d be two pairs of bootprints in the snow, side-by-side, walking in time with each other like no time had passed at all. “That your hotel is just on the way to the theatre and they’re holding the auditions today?” 

“Sure is,” Quinn murmured, muffled by her - by _Rachel’s_ \- scarf. She’d let Quinn keep it, she thought. It suited her. 

“It’s this way.” 

“You’ve been?”

“I’ve passed it on the way to things before.” Certain things were just baked into her commute at this point - the tree that bent at a weird angle, the fire hydrant someone had painted to look like a dog, this hotel. 

“Of course.” Quinn’s two-word responses were getting tiresome, but they were almost there and Rachel’s entire body still _hummed_ and what else was she supposed to do? _Hey, Quinn, who I apparently still miss a lot, want to stay here for a few more days after you were trapped with me for the better part of a week? We had sex last night!_ Of course not. 

Santana and Brittany, hands intertwined like they were made for it, waved to the pair. Rachel barely had a moment to take in the sight before Brittany crushed her in a tight, warm hug. 

“Nice to see you again, Berry,” Santana said. “How’s New York treating you?”

“Badly,” Rachel said, and didn’t elaborate. 

“I’m glad the subway rats didn’t get you,” Brittany said to Quinn, checking her over as if to make sure. 

“They probably would’ve, if this one hadn’t called me in.” Quinn laughed a stiff little laugh that shouldn’t have made Rachel feel like… _this,_ like she was _losing_ something. She turned back to Rachel, then, gave a tiny little wave. “Call me if you’re in Lima.” 

“I will.” And she would. “I should go, though, there’s already probably a line snaking around the block for the audition…”

“Go, go.” Quinn shooed her away, and Rachel held her gaze for a moment later before starting off in the direction of the theatre, her gait becoming steadier and steadier with each step. There wasn’t anything else for her to do, now, was there? Quinn would spend some more time with her friends and Rachel would try her hardest to get the gig and maybe it would be enough and maybe it wouldn’t be. 

Snow started to fall again, not harshly in the way it had until last night; this was a gentler sort of thing. Rachel watched it sink into the ground until she made it to the theatre. 

***

Quinn sat in the predictably crowded airport with a stuffed pretzel and a scarf from her former friend and wondered when, exactly, everything had gone wrong. If she was being practical about it (and even the word _practical_ came through in Rachel’s voice, now) she’d say it was when the bus driver had stopped in the wrong part of the city. If she was being honest about it, she’d say it was when she’d held Rachel closer than anything and hadn’t regretted a second of it. 

“What a weekend this turned out to be,” Santana sighed, perched on top of one of those weird rubbery chairs that seemed to be a constant at airports, looking out into the distance for her wife, who was currently on a mission to find a donut stand she _insisted_ was somewhere in this place. “Was it weird? Spending three days with her?”

“It was,” Quinn said, without hesitation. “It felt like we were kids again, but…different. Easier. Harder. I don’t know.” 

“You know how auditions of this scope go,” Santana said, cryptically. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“You have _time,_ is what I’m saying. Not all of you are as in touch with their feelings as Brittany and I. So catch the next flight if you want. We’ll be there when you get back.” 

And then she took Quinn’s pretzel and waved her off, just as Brittany returned with a baggie of donuts from a source that would probably remain unknown forever. 

***

“You don’t understand,” Rachel said, standing alone on a stage as a small panel of directors and choreographers and producers sat in the front row. Nothing like the theater to make her feel significant and tiny at the same time. “I come from a time that’s entirely different from this. You couldn’t begin to imagine it! Girls can wear _pants_ if they want!” 

“I wear pants,” said the producer, in a tone that indicated he’d probably said the same line a million times today. 

“Oh. So you do. But more than that - there are these little _things_ you carry around in your pockets, and they hold so much! The entire world at your fingertips!” A demo started to play, the sound tinny through the little stereo on the stage. 

_“This is a closed audition, ma’am,”_ a distant voice grumbled. A strip of light shone through the double doors in the back of the theater. Rachel’s head snapped up as she saw Quinn standing there, glowing like she always was, smiling at her in a way that seemed to tell her to keep going. 

“Let me tell you,” Rachel began, “about the future.” 

***

It was a Tony-worthy embrace, afterwards, a wildly uncertain and beautiful thing, and that was all before the kiss, before the phone call and the part and everything else. All of that was a little while away. 

For now, it was the two of them, holding each other in the snow, close together.

**Author's Note:**

> the gaylesball is eternal


End file.
